Raider wrestling gets first win

The Central High School wrestling team picked up its first win of the season over Livingston Academy (72-12) Tuesday in Cookeville.

Red Raider head coach Roger Barlow said it was good to get a win and he was happy with the way his team preformed in the meet.

“[Livingston] didn’t have a full roster but we only gave up one match that we did wrestle. They are a second or third year program and struggling along but it was good to get our first win,” said Barlow.

The Raiders dropped their other match to Cookeville 68-12 in the second dual meet of the young season.

“We wrestled tough; Cookeville is really good,” added Barlow. “A lot of our guys took them deep into the match before experience got us. It was a good night though because everyone got to wrestle once and most of them got to go twice, including our JV kids.”

Cody Amis was once again one of the highlights of the night for CHS, winning both his matches. Amis pinned Livingston’s Tyler Sherman and Cookeville’s Branson Satterfield.

“Cody Amis had a great night, he pinned the kid from Livingston and beat a really good wrestler from Cookeville,” explained Barlow.

Barlow also said he was happy with the way one of his freshman wrestlers stepped up in the meet. Owen Teague pinned Cookeville’s Patrick McKereghan in his first varsity match.

“Freshman Owen Teague got his first varsity action and picked up a couple wins. I was happy with how he did,” said Barlow. “I came out of there with a pretty good feeling because of how tough we wrestled. I am never happy with a loss but we had some good things happen.”

After having just one dual meet each of the first two weeks of the season, the Raiders will be much busier this week. Wednesday the team will have a match at Tullahoma in front of the student body before traveling to Mt. Juliet on Saturday for a tournament. Varsity matches are expected to begin at 2:30 p.m. for the match against Tullahoma.

“We have a very busy week coming up. I want to see improvement. We don’t have the level of competition we saw the first two weeks but it’s nothing to sneeze at. We have Tullahoma at their place; we have our work cut out for us and we need to get better every time we wrestle,” said Barlow.

Barlow said he knows beating Tullahoma will be a tall task for his inexperienced team but also knows it is a huge opportunity…